“Rogue actors across the globe who wish harm on Texans should not be allowed to infiltrate our state’s network and devices,” says Texas Governor Greg Abbott, as quoted in a press release (January 26, 2056).
“Hostile adversaries harvest user data through AI and other applications and hardware to exploit, manipulate, and violate users and put them at extreme risk. Today, I am expanding the prohibited technologies list to mitigate that risk and protect the privacy of Texans from the People’s Republic of China, the Chinese Communist Party, and any other hostile foreign actors who may attempt to undermine the safety and security of Texas.”
The newly banned tech includes SenseTime, Megvii, CloudWalk, Autel, CATL, Wuhan Geosun LiDAR, Yitu, iFlytek, Uniview, Zhipu (Z.ai), Beijing Academy of Artificial Intelligence (BAAI), Alibaba, Xiaomi, Gotion High Tech, Baidu, RoboSense LiDAR, TP-Link, Hisense, TCL, Baichuan, StepFun, MiniMax, PDD (Pinduoduo, Temu), Shein, Moonshot AI, and NucTech.
At least some of the added hardware and apps—like TP-Link, Alibaba, Temu, and Baidu—have been around for years and known to be security risks, so perhaps could have been added to the list of prohibited tech during earlier Texas initiatives.
But a policy of belated attention to the need to reduce the security risks associated with this technology from CCP-governed China is superior to the policy of many other state governments, and, often, the federal government, that of no attention.
From apps to infrastructure
Texas’s efforts along these lines may have begun in 2022, when the state prohibited the use of TikTok on state-issued devices. The state government expanded its initiatives in November 2024.
In that year, Governor Abbott ordered the state’s investing entities to abstain from “making any new investments of state funds in China. To the extent you have any current investments in China, you are required to divest at the first available opportunity.”
He directed the Texas Department of Public Safety “to target and arrest anyone implementing CCP influence operations [that] forcibly return people to China.” Whether the state has made any arrests under this injunction is unclear. The federal government has occasionally charged and convicted Chinese nationals for trying to forcibly return others to China. But I can find no reports of arrests on such grounds by the Texas government.
Also in 2024, Governor Abbott directed other state agencies “to prepare for potential threats against Texas’s critical infrastructure from a hostile foreign government or their proxies.”
In February 2025, he added certain Chinese AI and social media apps to the list of tech that government employees were prohibited from using on state-issued devices.
Also see:
StoptheCCP.org: Don’t Mess With Texas, Beijing
